The transport pool

European Transport Council

Report and draft Recommendation on the establishment of a European Internal Transport Council put forward on 24 September 1952 by Maurice Lemaire, former Head of the French State Railways (SNCF), to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe.

On 26 September 1952, the representatives of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe discuss the plan for a European Transport Council put forward on 24 September 1952 by Maurice Lemaire, former Head of the French State Railways (SNCF), on behalf of the Committee on Economic Affairs.

Recommendation adopted on 26 September 1952 by the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe on the establishment of a European Transport Council with a view to more effective coordination of Europe’s transport networks.

In May 1955, in its report on the state of economic integration in Western Europe, the Council of Europe analyses the policies pursued within the transport sector in order to encourage the integration process in that sector.

European Transport Authority

Address given by Edouard Bonnefous on 16 August 1950 to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe as part of the presentation of his proposal for the establishment of a European Transport Council.

Motion tabled on 16 August 1950 by Edouard Bonnefous to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe recommending the establishment of a European Transport Organisation with the aim of improving the existing transport networks and making them more efficient.

Debates in the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe in May 1951 on the plan for a specialist European authority for transport and the coordination of air transport presented by the rapporteur Edouard Bonnefous.

In January 1951, in the journal Notre Europe, Edouard Bonnefous, President of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the French National Assembly and delegate to the Consultative Assembly of Europe, calls for the creation of a European Transport Organisation.

Reactions

In December 1951, the Revue d’économie politique publishes an article by the Frenchman, Raoul Dautry, former Managing Director of the French State Railways, in which he advocates the reorganisation of European transport.

On 10 May 1953, Maurice Lemaire, a French delegate to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe and former Head of the French State Railways (SNCF), gives his point of view on the organisation of overland transport in Europe in the French daily newspaper Le Monde.

The European Conference of Transport Ministers (13 to 17 October 1953)

On 17 October 1953, the governments present at the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) held in Brussels sign a protocol with a view, in particular, to coordinating and streamlining the development of internal European transport.

On 17 March 1954, Paul Willem Segers, Belgian Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the European Conference of Ministers of Transport, writes a letter to the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Léon Marchal, expressing his wish to establish official relations between the two organisations.